TUCSON — They are two desert racetracks separated by some 8,378 miles, distinct cultures and hundreds of millions of dollars.

The spectators here at Rillito Park sip their beer from plastic cups, speak mostly Spanish and bake on the track’s concrete apron as they cheer inexpensive horses running for as little as $1,900.

The more than 70,000 people expected at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai on Saturday will include billionaire sheikhs, European swells and horsemen from 13 countries. Some will watch from the world’s first trackside five-star hotel, The Meydan, while others will crowd its champagne bars between the nine races, which will dole out a combined $29 million in purses.

But the tracks share two things: a passion for fast horses and the thoroughbred trainer Bob Baffert.

It was at Rillito Park, a dusty old track considered the birthplace of modern quarter-horse racing, that Baffert began his career, first as a “second-rate jockey” (his words) and later as a trainer. At the World Cup in Dubai, Baffert — a 64-year-old Hall of Fame trainer with more than 2,700 victories, including two in the World Cup as well as the sweep of the Triple Crown two years ago with American Pharoah — will saddle Arrogate, the overwhelming favorite.

How Baffert got from this little track on the grits-and-hard-toast circuit to some of the world’s richest races has a lot to do with hard work and failure.

Rillito Park “was the big time for me,” he said. “I first went there when I was 10 years old to run a few horses with my dad. He trained a few as a hobby, but mostly we were there to listen to the old-timers tell stories. I thought that if someday I could make it there, I’d be set for life.”

In the 1970s, Baffert was a one-man-band, racing a handful of quarter horses — an American breed that excelled at sprinting short distances, usually a quarter mile or less — at fair meets or unsanctioned match races on abandoned airstrips here in his home state. He was hardly an overnight success. It took him 12 lean years as a quarter-horse trainer to surpass $1 million in earnings.

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A horse named Father Mark trained by Bob Baffert, at left, after a win at the Rillito Park racetrack in November 1980.CreditCourtesy Rillito Park Racetrack

In fact, he almost quit at one point after his father, Bill, the man who introduced him to racing, took a horse away from him to train it himself.

But Baffert found a home here at Rillito Park in the late 1970s and early 1980s, putting his 40 horses through their training at dawn before the desert sun appeared, and sending one swift horse after another in the afternoons.

“I was a big fish in a small pond,” he said. “The purse for regular races was $600, and there might be a stakes race worth $10,000 or $20,000. We didn’t make any money, but it was where I wanted to be.”

Many of the charms Baffert remembers fondly about Rillito Park are still in place: the bleached and weathered grandstand and a saddling paddock circled by chain link that is no bigger than an aboveground pool. Bettors are still reminded that post time is near when the public address system plays the whistling theme song from the 1957 film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

Even an old friend and competitor remains behind: Don Lee French, a jockey whose gray ponytail and Jerry Garcia beard has been cultivated over about 5,000 starts dating back to 1976.

“I broke them, rode them, wrapped them, and slept with them since I was a boy,” Baffert said. “I could have trained there all my life.”

Instead, it was Mike Pegram, one of his owners, who nudged Baffert along the road to Dubai. Pegram gave him a check for $300,000 and told him to go buy some thoroughbreds.

Once more, Baffert needed time to master the intricacies of training high-strung and fragile athletes that carry their speed beyond a mile.

It took about a dozen years before he gained the notice of the thoroughbred crowd in 1992 by winning the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint with a horse called Thirty Slews. Baffert gave Pegram a piece of the horse as a way of saying thanks. They kept working together and won the 1998 Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Real Quiet, and the Dubai World Cup in 2001 with Captain Steve.

In Dubai, Baffert says he has found a similar camaraderie and ardor for horses that he first experienced at Rillito — though in far more luxurious surroundings and with higher stakes. He first went to Dubai for the 1998 World Cup with Silver Charm, who had won the Derby and Preakness the previous year.

In a hard-fought stretch drive, Silver Charm held off a horse named Swain, who was bred and owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. The World Cup and Meydan Racecourse and a vast breeding and racing concern called Godolphin were all a part of the sheikh’s vision.

What Sheik Mohammed conceived was partly to remind people that all modern thoroughbreds trace back to three stallions — the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk — imported to England from the Middle East three centuries ago.

He named his family’s racing stable Godolphin, after the small but striking Arabian who, as one story goes, was discovered by an Englishman pulling a cart through the streets of Paris and was purchased for a pittance.

“Sheik Mo and his people met me in the winners’ circle, and all he wanted to do was put his hands on Silver Charm and admire him,” Baffert said. “They have everything in the world, but all they wanted was to touch this horse. They have so much passion for these horses and sport.”

It was the beginning of a friendship that paid mortal dividends in March 2012 when Baffert had a near-fatal heart attack in Dubai days before the World Cup. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where Sheikh Mohammed sent his cardiologist. In future tellings, the cardiologist would be known as “Dr. Armani” because he was the best-dressed doctor Baffert had ever seen.

He apparently was also a good doctor as Baffert has recovered, swept the 2015 Triple Crown with American Pharoah and won the Eclipse Award as outstanding trainer.

This is the first time Baffert has been in Dubai since his heart attack, but he says that he is not worried. “Dr. Armani is going to follow me around with the paddles,” he said.

In Arrogate, Baffert has a horse who has won six of his seven races and is considered the best in the world. He also is a horse whom — when Baffert was a young trainer here at Rillito Park, making his mistakes — he could not even imagine getting the chance to train.

“My hope was to win there and maybe go on to the big time at Sunland Park or Los Alamitos,” he said, referring to quarter-horse tracks in New Mexico and California. “I owe Rillito Park. One of these days, I’m going to run another horse there.”